James Gray Latest Celebrity News & Gossip

Armageddon Time director James Gray’s got a tip for aspiring filmmakers: If you want to look good as a director, work with gifted actors, like Anthony Hopkins, Anne Hathaway and Jeremy Strong.

Three rite-of-passage movies are vying for attention this week at a moment when the rewards of maturity seem to be offering more gratification than the agonies of youth.

Veteran studio executives Peter Kujawski and Jason Cassidy will receive an Industry Tribute at the 32nd annual Gotham Awards ceremony, taking place live and in person at Cipriani Wall Street in New York City on Monday, November 28.

Over the past two weekends in limited release, Martin McDonagh’s tragicomedy starring Colin Farrell and Brendan Gleeson has posted better numbers than Focus Features’ “Tár” but well short of McDonagh’s 2017 Oscar winner “Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri.” That trend has continued as “Inisherin” beat the $1 million total earned last weekend by “Tár” from 1,095 theaters while grossing roughly half of the $4.4 million 3-day total that “Three Billboards” earned from 614 theaters on Thanksgiving weekend five years ago. Such a result is to be expected, as arthouses that survived the COVID-19 pandemic labor to bring audiences back to theaters for critically-acclaimed but challenging fare.

“Till” is sixth on the box office charts after expanding to 2,058 theaters, grossing just $2.8 million for a per-theater average of $1,366 and a running total of $3.6 million. The good news for Chinonye Chukwu’s true-story drama about the murder of Emmett Till is that critical and audience praise has been overwhelming, with a 98% Rotten Tomatoes score and an A+ on CinemaScore.

James Gray‘s “Armageddon Time” finally hits theaters today after its world premiere at the Cannes Film Festival this past May. And the film, Gray’s follow-up to 2019’s “Ad Astra,” has a great deal of buzz surrounding it, with near-unanimous critical support.

Lise Pedersen U.S. film writer and director James Gray (“Little Odessa”, “Two Lovers”, “The Immigrant”, “Armageddon Time”) drew several laugh-out-loud moments from a packed theatre during a masterclass at the Lumiere Film Festival in Lyon.   In a disarmingly honest conversation laced with humorous self-deprecation, the Venice Silver Lion Winner (“Little Odessa”, 1994) opened up about his love of cinema and the ups and downs of his career.  Speaking about the highly autobiographical nature of his new film, “Armageddon Time”, a deeply personal look at his Queens childhood in 1980s America, Gray explained that it was a natural evolution after his two previous films, “The Lost City of Z”, which is partly set in the Amazon and left him physically exhausted, and “Ad Astra.”  

Is there a better way to prove the virtue of the cinematic experience than to get 5,000 people on their feet giving a film a standing ovation?  Cannes Film Festival chief Thierry Fremaux did just that on the opening night of his 14th Lumière Film Festival in Lyon with Louis Garrel’s romantic comedy “The Innocent.”  The movie played in the jam-packed Halle Tony Garnier before a star-studded crowd, including Garrel and his cast, Noémie Merlant and Roschdy Zem, as well as Sebastián Lelio, Costa Gavras, Leila Bekhti, Marina Fois, Lee Chang-dong, Nicole Garcia, Sabine Azema and Damien Bonnard. 

Antonio Ferme editor James Gray’s “Armageddon Time” explores the complexity of the American Dream — the idea that every citizen should have an equal opportunity to achieve success through hard work and initiative — from the perspective of a Jewish family in 1980. “In some ways,” according to star Anne Hathaway, the status of this idealistic pursuit has remained “very similar” over the years. At the same time, the actor pinpointed a notable societal change that she hopes continues to persist. “If there’s one thing that I really do hope that we keep coming to a different place about because it keeps coming up at such an impossibly high cost, is that we’re more willing to see ourselves as a part of the problem,” Hathaway told Variety on Wednesday night at the “Armaggedon Time” New York Film Festival premiere. “Not in a fragile way, but in a way that we can affect change by changing ourselves.”

Martin Scorsese gave a long shout-out to the NYFF and the art of cinema on stage at Avery Fisher Hall as the fest celebrated its 60th anniversary with the world premiere of his latest documentary, Personality Crisis: One Night Only. It followed a screening of Armageddon Time, another New York story by native New Yorker James Gray.

Anne Hathaway goes bold and bright for a few appearances to promote her new movie, Armageddon Time, in New York City on Wednesday (October 12).

Based on Olafur Johann Olafsson’s novel released in August, “Touch” follows an elderly Icelandic man named Kristofer (Egill Olafsson) who is forced to shut down his restaurant because of the pandemic. But as the world begins to shut down, he receives a message from a woman named Miko, whom he dated nearly 60 years ago when they were students in London before she suddenly disappeared.

EXCLUSIVE: Focus Features has boarded Beast and Everest filmmaker Baltasar Kormákur’s romantic drama Touch, which begins principal photography Sunday in London. Focus will release domestically, with Universal Pictures International handling overseas distribution (excluding Iceland).

‘Power Of The Dog’ Producer Tanya Seghatchian To Lead London Film Festival Jury

EXCLUSIVE: Jaylin Webb, the young star of James Gray’s autobiographical period drama, Armageddon Time, has signed with Innovative Artists for representation. 

Succession star Jeremy Strong has said he believes acting is his religion.The actor recently opened up about his practice while discussing his role in James Gray’s forthcoming Armageddon Time, telling the Hollywood Reporter that acting in plays offered “a sense of levitation and escape”.When asked by the journalist whether he would consider acting his “religion”, Strong said he would.“It might come off sounding a certain way if I were to say that, but yes,” the actor replied. “I think it is a sacramental activity expressing a faith, if that’s what a religion is.“I feel wary of saying that because religion is religion and I don’t want to diminish what religion is.

Jeremy Strong‘s immediate on-screen future is already foretold: James Gray‘s “Armageddon Time” hits theaters on October 28, and Season 4 of HBO‘s “Succession” is in production. But thanks to a new interview in The Hollywood Reporter (via IndieWire), the actor’s more distant upcoming projects are also coming into focus.

Clayton Davis Trying to follow in the footsteps of last year’s best original screenplay winner Kenneth Branagh (“Belfast”), Focus Features is trying to position writer, director and co-producer James Gray as one of the awards season’s breakout nominees for “Armageddon Time.” The film is currently sitting with a respectable 89% on Rotten Tomatoes, and the awards team will be looking for opportunities beyond the Writer’s Branch. After debuting the film at the Cannes Film Festival, before making stops at Telluride and later this week at the New York Film Festival, the distributor has revealed exclusively to Variety its awards submission categories for the film’s actors.

grossed an impressive $11.3 million at the North American box office this year.Instead, the country’s selection committee went with “Last Film Show,” a coming-of-age drama that was compared to “Cinema Paradiso” after its premiere at this year’s Tribeca Film Festival. In the vein of Steven Spielberg’s “The Fabelmans” and James Gray’s “Armageddon Time,” it is a semi-autobiographical work based on moments from its director’s childhood.The decision was reminiscent of the choice in 2013 to send “The Good Road” to the Oscars over “The Lunchbox,” which had been considered an all-but-certain nominee if it had been chosen.India has sent 54 films to the Oscars dating back to 1957, landing three nominations with no wins.

The first trailer for Armageddon Time has been released!

The trailer for James Gray’s “Armageddon Time”, starring Anthony Hopkins, Anne Hathaway, and more, is here.

Michaela Zee editor James Gray is reminiscing about his childhood in Queens in the first trailer for his semi-autobiographical film “Armageddon Time.” Inspired by the director’s upbringing in 1980s Queens, the film loosely follows Gray’s experiences as a student at the Kew-Forest School in New York City — where Donald Trump also attended. Starring newcomer Banks Repeta as Paul Graff, “Armageddon Time” also includes Jeremy Strong and Anne Hathaway as Paul’s parents Irving and Esther, and Anthony Hopkins as his grandfather. Additional cast members include Jaylin Webb, Ryan Sell, Tovah Feldshuh and John Diehl as Fred Trump. In May, Hathaway and Gray broke into tears as the film received a seven-minute standing ovation following its premiere at the Cannes Film Festival. Viewers were also surprised to see Jessica Chastain appear in a small cameo as Donald Trump’s sister, Maryanne.